Taio’s hot right now with his single Break Your Heart only just vacating the top spot on the charts having spent the last three weeks there. Yes, the tables are a-turning for this UK singer-songwriter. But isn’t he an r&b artist? Nah, not in this young man’s opinion - and he’s been on a mission to get the message across loud and clear for quite some time. But will anyone listen? Is a cool album title enough to convince the cynics and will the music within capture the imagination of his established fans and perhaps claim a bigger share of the buying public’s affection? We ran the rule over his new album Rokstarr to see if he came up short…
For starters the album has been sequenced into two parts. The first half is dance/electro-orientated with generous amounts of auto-tune applied to vocals. The second half is pop-based showcasing big choruses. The hit single Break Your Heart perfectly illustrates the direction that Taio has taken with the up-tempo tracks, while others that follow suit include No Other One and Take Me Back, which features Tinchy Stryder. Dirty Picture is the pick of these and really comes alive once the fuzzy b-line kicks in. I’ll Never Love Again is the transition track that links the first half with the second - it’s also one of the strongest. Taio wears his pop influences on his sleeve with Only You, drawing heavily on Coldplay’s stadium-perfected pop/rock and Take That’s song craft. The remaining songs follow its lead featuring verses that build into huge choruses, an exception being the bonus track 11th Hour which returns us back to the land of dancy beats. Overall the pop tracks are stronger but the dance tracks carry more appeal.
Musically it’s not terribly exciting and lyrically it’s not all that diverse with generic themes of love (lost, desired or cherished) dominating 99% of the tracks. Surely there’s more to life than this? We didn’t really get an insight into the man’s mind but we’re not sure if this will solve his identity crisis of being perceived as a r&b artist? Sure, it’s rich with pop hits as Break Your Heart and Take Me Back have already proved but the up-tempo tracks would benefit from dance remixes. Overall, the lack of depth on display left us feeling mostly disappointed and quite frankly a little bored.
Taio Cruz’s Rokstarr is out now.
(Andrew John)
